Perhaps the greatest legacy of George W. Bush and his administration will be that they reminded us, We The People, that it is our responsibility to be vigilant in demanding accountability, constitutionality, and adherence to the rule of law from the Executive Branch. It's not as if there aren't real consequences of not doing so. With the debacle in Iraq ($400 billion, 3,200 lives, and counting), the utter neglect of victims of Katrina, and illegal wiretapping in violation of FISA, among many, many other things, that should be abundantly clear to us by now.
But what to do? How do we prevent another administration from learning and applying the Real Bush Doctrine (Do Whatever You Want)? (This is sort of a meta diary on our government, as opposed to our blog.)
There are supposed to be safeguards: The Legislative Branch is supposed to exert oversight, but they're too busy doing whatever they can to stay in office. If the president is of the same party as the Congressional majority, that means its objective is propping up the Party, no matter what transgressions the Executive may be guilty of. If the president is of the opposing party, that helps, but Congresspeople still have to worry about appearing to be objective and not taking out their frustrations by being overly nitpicky. For example, why is even the current Congress not putting the admitted violations of FISA front and center? The president admitted to breaking the law, but you don't hear much about it anymore. Reason: They don't want to be seen as soft on terrorists, a perception that they feel spells political doom.
The press is supposed to be The Fourth Estate, but in the runup to the Iraq War, we all saw how short they can come up. Even now, with the Scooter Libby trial ended, the questions surrounding the administration's twisting of intelligence to support their desire for an unnecessary war have melted back into the countryside. The Bush administration is likely never to have to face up to their past transgressions, or at least not to have any legal ramifications for them. Sadly, the lesson to future administrations is that you can do whatever you want to do, as long as you have skilled spin doctors to intimidate the press and even the electorate.
Are we tired of being bullied this way? (Does a bear shit in the woods?) We deserve better than this.
It is time for a Fourth Branch of government, in my opinion. Some kind of Accountability Branch whose sole nonpartisan mission is to independently demand that government is run as it should be, with the imposition of real consequences at its disposal if it is not. A permanent Special Investigator's office of sorts. A Government Accountability Office with teeth.
The new branch would have to be largely judicial, but it would differ from the Supreme Court in some important ways:
- The justices would not be appointed by anyone in government, but by the people. They would not, and could not, declare a party affiliation. Their job would be to inititate cases, not wait for cases to come to them. (I'd like your comments on the details, though: elections to a permanent office? Some sort of meritocracy program? But certainly not political appointments.)
- The plaintiffs in each case would effectively always be The People Of The United States, who currently do not have a good mechanism for bringing action directly against their government. Current Supreme Court cases require that an individual bring charges that a specific right has been violated against only them. That is too restrictive.
- There would be a jury in all cases which would be filled by mandatory jury duty in which citizens are selected at random as they are in criminal cases.
- The justices would have the power to assess penalties within pre-established guidelines that would not take effect until one complete term had elapsed for the president and both houses of Congress. That way officials would go into office knowing full well what ethical and legal restraints they were subject to.
The defendants could be anyone who holds or has declared candidacy to hold office at any level. That goes all the way down to deceptive political ads. It's great that groups like Media Matters sincerely attempt to expose falsehoods spewed by officials and candidates, but as we have seen, without teeth, all they can do is bluster and harrumph. The fact that the workload could be overwhelming is only a testament to how much such a branch is needed. It should encourage us to, not discourage us from, forming one.
It is not too much to ask that government officials pledge to uphold the Constitution, conduct themselves ethically, and face sanctions if they do not. We all are subject to such understandings when we take on a new job, for example. Most of us would have been fired long ago if we had obfuscated, wheeled and dealed, and outright broke the law as the current administration has.
We should all be acutely aware now that government cannot police itself. We have to have the resolve to demand that our public officials behave legally and ethically, and we have to have the courage to back that up with fundamental change.
But more than that, we must dedicate ourselves to the American ideal. When we say officials must act legally and ethically, that has to mean even if they are members of our favorite political party. Part of the danger of the two-party system is that supporters of Party A are willing to overlook a certain level of impropriety by Party A, as long as we feel it will keep Party A, and not the gawd-awful Party B, at the helm. It certainly is tempting as Democrats to let a few things slide if we can have confidence that Democrats will keep power. But we shortchange ourselves terribly when we do that. The playing field has to be kept strictly level, and we must have the courage to be objective in our demand that this be so. Anything less would be (ideally, at least) un-American.
We have to do something. Officials are too beholden to Big Money to care about We The People. We cannot be so lazily complicit. But we have to designate those whose jobs it is to do this for us. We are lucky that we, in our daily lives, even get the time to stick a post up on a blog, let alone fully investigate the doings of our government.
You could always end just about any post here with these words from the writer who needs no introduction. But they're so universally powerful even 144 years later that I'm going to ride the cliche. We must resolve "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."